014 - The Shaping of Things to Come

The Shaping of Things to Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch is a great read for church leaders seeking to reach out to the upcoming generations. The authors write from a very post-modern viewpoint as to how the church can minister to young post-moderns. They believe that the current model of church is quickly become ineffective and push the reader to begin shifting their paradigm to a more "missional" one. In recent years the church has become more and more rejected by most people in the Western world. Even worse, the church has been experienced and then rejected. The topics of spirituality, meaning, and God have become more readily available but Christianity has been rejected as the answer to these topics.

The author's do an excellent job of showing what needs to change in the church to become effective again. They also build a case against the arguments that many reader may build while reading the book. I would highly recommend this book to be read by anyone in church leadership or anyone interested in the future of the church. Fairly deep and thought provoking, yet also adding practical advice and steps to the theology it teaches. Plenty of quotable portions and plenty of graphs for the visually-minded.